


Ghoul

by verycoolperson, Vrunka



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Body Horror, Gore, Illustrated, M/M, Medical Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-10-17 22:46:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10603860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verycoolperson/pseuds/verycoolperson, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vrunka/pseuds/Vrunka
Summary: Medical miracles do not come lightly.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> How about that Blackwatch Genji ayyyyyyyeeee

Mercy

The first thing she knows is that he is dying. Fast. Expiring in front of her.

The tattered ends of his flesh, the rotting, nauseating smell of intestines and gore. A metallic tang of blood so heavy in the air she can taste it.

She looks at the man on the table.

But she doesn't see a man.

She sees the symptoms, what must be addressed before he can be a man again. She sees, easily, where to start. She remembers Jack's hand on her shoulder.

His utter faith in her.

She is twenty-one.

And he believes in her. 

The man twitches, he shouldn't even be conscious. But he moves again, his remaining arm curling across the surface of her table. The slow, inexorable ebb of his life from the poorly cauterized edges of his wounds.

Room to work.

Like taking in a seam.

Angela steps forward and the man looks up at her with a glare. Pure hate and fury and pain. His jaw is a raw, ripped expanse. Mostly cosmetic damage. She will fix it later, eventually. Without it he looks like an animal. A feral awful thing.

His gaze bores into her.

"Nurse," she says. "Give him fifteen more ccs thiopental. Knock him out please."

And then she gets to work.

Jack

He stands, looking down on the operating theater. His hands pressed against the glass. A smear of sweat from him palms marring the clear surface.

Below him, Angela has begun her grim work. The removal of the parts too damaged to use, too ruined to salvage, is probably the worst part.

Strips of flesh hang from the table, discarded.

Jack's fingers curl on the glass.

"This is a mistake, you know," Gabe says from behind him.

No other announcement of his presence. Jack jumps. His hand thumps against the glass and a nurse below looks up.

"How long have you been here?"

Standing there, ghostlike. Gabe crosses his arms, shrugs his shoulders.

"It was a cute speech you gave her. Real uplifting," Gabe says.

"If it gives her the confidence to do this, then I--"

"It was a bunch of bullshit, Jackie, and you know it."

Gabe steps forward. His elbow brushes Jack's. Too long ago it would have meant something, been a reassurance. Too long. Too long.

"This," Gabe says, nodding to the pavilion below. The corpse who is slowly, slowly becoming something different, something worse. Inhuman. "This is officially sick. It's fucked up, even for us."

Jack swallows. "It," he says, "it is for the greater good."

"It's torture."

Jack winces. "It's necessary. We...we must do what is necessary. Or..."

Gabe licks his lips. The motion, under these circumstances, should not be as sensual as it comes across. His tongue is the same slimy red as Shimada's guts. Jack shivers, he looks away.

"If that's what you gotta tell yourself," Gabe says. "The girl is gonna be pissed when she figures out you used her."

Angela will be.

She'll be furious.

But Jack doesn't control that. He doesn't control any of it.

"If we're done here," he says, trailing off with purpose. He can feel Gabe's frown, he doesn't need to turn to see it.

"Yeah," Gabe says, stepping back, melting into the darkness of the room behind them. "Yeah," he says, "we're done."

Jesse

"It true he's a ghoul?" Jesse asks. His gun hangs at his side. Training has lost all appeal in the wake of new gossip.

Fareeha shrugs. She isn't supposed to be here, on the training grounds without her mother. But the whole base is a buzz with news of the new arrival.

Ana's vigilant guard has clearly slipped with the excitement.

"I ain't seen him," she says. Mimicking Jesse's accent.

"Haven't," Jesse corrects, because he certainly doesn't need Ana up his ass over messing up her daughter's English.

Fareeha frowns, rolls her shoulder. "Haven't. Fine. Heard he's cut up real bad, though. Someone in the kitchens said he was bleeding out when they brought him in. How much blood does it take to do that anyway? Gotta be a lot."

Jesse shakes his head. "Dunno." His thumb slides along the handle of peacekeeper, the dent it got before he'd left Deadlock. His nail catches within the glove. "A lot, yeah. You should...prolly get goin'. Don't want yer ma to catch you out here."

"You're scared of my mom," Fareeha teases, grinning.

"Respect and fear are two different things. You should listen to her. She only wants what's best for you."

"Easy for you to say." She looks down. Her expression shifts. A frown working it's way across her face. "They say his brother did it, did you hear that part? Cut him up alive." Her clouded expression darkens further, brows coming together. "Can you imagine that?"

Jesse crosses his arms. He swallows down his first answer. Fareeha is twelve, she doesn't need the flippant response at the forefront of his tongue. She asked the question. She asked it seriously.

He holsters Peacekeeper. Scratches at his incoming scruff of beard.

"I can't imagine," he says, "and I don't wanna."

Fareeha looks up at him. She nods, once, solemn, before a grin breaks out over her face again.

"I should go," she says. "See you for dinner?"

"Consider it a date, lil darlin'."

And with that, she is off.

Jesse stands on the range a second longer, scuffs his foot against the ground, kicks the sand up for something to do.

Then he decides.

And he goes.

The medical wing is not far. He's been there himself a couple times. A broken nose, a bad case of pneumonia. He's never formally been in the operating theater, but he knows the way.

The red Surgery sign is on over the door when he arrives. But there are no guards.

No one stops him.

He pushes the door open.

He isn't sure what he expected to see, but the horror show behind the doors marked Surgery is not at all it.

The person is a corpse, he has to be, too much blood, so much blood. A twisted, pulsating bit of metal has been wired to his chest. A halo of tubes, an orbit, all of them heavy and red, pumping his losses back into him.

And there in the middle, practically glowing in the fluorescents is Angela. And she is perfect and white and blonde with only a dash of blood scraped artfully across her surgical mask. Perfect and pristine like an angel.

Except for her hands.

Her bloody, awful hands.

Holding a pulpy mess of something, grey-purple and red. A lung; Jesse realizes, Jesus fuck it's a lung.

Her eyes go wide as she looks over her shoulder at the interruption.

A nurse is moving between Jesse and the scene. Her hands upraised. 

And the corpse on the table, the dead man, the ghoul--

He raises his head. He should be unconscious, Jesse thinks, holy Christ holy shit he cannot be awake.

A rag has been placed over his eyes, for modesty, for peace for fucking whatever, but it falls now with the impossible movement.

His exposed neck muscles shift and stretch. The straining tendons of his throat.

His eyes catch Jesse's.

And they are raw and rage-filled and terrifying.

It is the last thing Jesse sees before he is bodily removed from the room.

Gabriel

"You don't understand what I'm sayin'," Jesse argues. "You ain't listenin' to me."

Gabriel sighs, he presses his fingers against his temples. "No," he says sternly, "you don't understand. Commander Morrison is having a fit over this. You could have done a lot of harm to...to the project."

"The dead man, you mean. The monster."

"McCree."

"I ain't dropping this, Chief. It's...I can't just drop it. He ain't human."

"I assure you, Genji Shimada is definitely human," Gabriel says. "And...he will be useful. Once he's conscious. Once Mercy has finished her...work."

"But I--"

"It's the end of it, McCree. The decision is neither of ours and it sure as shit isn't your job to question orders."

McCree seems to deflate. Gabriel wonders if, for once, he's found a way through to the kid.

McCree hangs his head, Gabriel can see the way his eyes trace the floor around his boots. He swallows once.

"You ever seen a rabid dog, Commander?" he asks.

Gabriel blinks. "What?"

"I'm just. I've seen plenty of rabid dogs out in the desert and the thing about 'em is that they ain't tools. You can't use them as tools. They ain't useful for much else but target practice."

"The point you are making, McCree?"

McCree blinks. He looks up. His shoulders square. "That Genji is a rabid dog, sir. Not a human reaction left in him's not rage and maybe hate. You can see it in his eyes, sir. And I think...I think we're being damn stupid lettin' him in with us. I think it's a right bad idea. Cruel. You put a dog with rabies out of its misery. And I--"

"Enough, McCree. That's enough. You've got laps to run at 0600. A little something for sticking your nose in where it doesn't belong. Consider it a mercy, kid. Consider it kinder than what we're doing to him. You're dismissed, McCree."

"Sir, I--"

"Another word and it'll be more than just laps, now get out of my sight."

Genji

The cowboy has returned. Not a fever vision, not an illusion.

The angel speaks with him. Her halo of glowing hair, her spindling arms, her fingers of knives.

Their lips move in sync.

She is frowning. He is frowning. Genji cannot read their lips. He is too tired.

His body aches.

The memory of his body aches. Places that once were, that no longer are. Cut away by the angel, by the blond man, by the cowboy.

By Hanzo.

Oh Hanzo.

Genji's eyes flutter shut. She has done something to them. Drops and drops. The angel told him why, he thinks, though maybe it is imagined. He isn't really sure what all is real any more.

A cowboy.

And angel.

His own brother splattered in his blood.

God, he's going to kill Hanzo. When he escapes here, when he gets out, he is going to tear every last thing Hanzo loves to pieces. And then he is going to watch his brother crumble.

And he is going to enjoy it.

The cowboy looks over at him. Scratches a gloved finger down his cheek. His skin peels away where the finger tracks, flakes and curls revealing the shiny, wet red muscles.

He is saying something.

Genji realizes, slowly, that the cowboy is addressing him.

"I don't think he can hear you," the angel says. Her accent is thick. It takes Genji a moment to process. Her voice comes to him over static. Her pupil-less eyes glow milky in the light. Three of her arms twist sinuously about her body. Her knife fingers clatter and clash when they strike one another. "Jack must have had a translator."

Genji closes his eyes. Footsteps announce the pair's approach. Genji opens his eyes and the cowboy recoils slightly at the gaze.

"Ya think?" The cowboy says. He leans forward and the angel frowns.

"Without a mask you shouldn't be--"

"I got it, Angie, I got it." The cowboy leans back again. His fingers twitch at his sides. Genji's fingers mirror the motion upon the table. His left hand curling. His right...he doesn't know what has happened to his right. The nerves feel like they are on fire.

The angel looks on at him gently. Her expression is equal parts pitying and pride. Genji knows, somehow, intrinsically, that this is how it will always be between them.

"Think you're wrong though," the cowboy says. "Think he understands us just fine. Look at his eyes, tracking between us. He knows what we're saying."

Genji's eyes flick to the angel, unconsciously awaiting her judgement. He has not spoken since they brought him in.

She looks uncomfortable.

"He's...very, very drugged right now, Jesse. We can't know for sure what's happening in his head."

Do you want to live the blond man had said. A machine repeating the words in Japanese, stilted and mechanical. The inflection off.

Do you want to live.

The cowboy's eyes narrow. Genji's skin, what is left of it, tingles.

Hatred and anger.

The cowboy carries the memories of them on his shoulders.

The two of them are perhaps not so different.

"Can you hear me?" The cowboy asks.

Genji blinks, once.

His jaw is not how he remembers. It feels different. Stiff and useless. His teeth catch on one another. He gets his mouth open. He closes it. His vocal chords protest the attempt. Raw and metallic flavor against his tongue.

"Yes," he says after a moment's struggle. His tongue sliding against the foreign plane of his bottom palette.

"Yes," he says again. "I understand you."


	2. Chapter 2

Jack

"I'm not quitting," Angela says. "But I...a leave of absence. I can't..." Her hands flutter at her sides. Clench and loosen. She isn't wearing gloves but there is a slight stain to her fingers.

Blood under the nails, dried but still there.

She hasn't noticed.

The dark circles under her eyes threaten to swallow her face. Her cheek bones are stark in her gaunt face.

Becoming the corpse she has brought back from the brink.

"You've done a great job, Angie," Jack says. He makes his voice as warm as he can. The sort of inflections he uses for television spots. "No one could have asked for anything more."

He pauses. Lets the praise sink in. Angela brightens a little bit. Her shoulders straighten. Her fingers stop their hectic movement. She offers him a tired smile.

"Shimada is stable?" Jack asks

Angela's pale skin flushes. "Stable uhm. Yes. Physically. Yes."

The unspoken part of her statement does not go unnoticed.

Jack frowns. McCree has been to the med-ward every day despite Jack's strict orders that he should be kept out. Medical personnel contact only. Shimada is a killer and a traitor and worse. He has not been recruited to Blackwatch to make friends.

"When do you think he'll be combat ready?"

Angela rolls her shoulders. Her discomfort is an open book across her face. She's a brilliant doctor; she's a terrible liar. The two sit at odds with one another.

"I don't think...that is he. Genji is very--"

"Shimada."

Angela flinches.

Jack's tone brooks no argument.

"Shimada would...if you set him loose tomorrow, he would kill everyone left in the clan."

"Would he be physically capable of that?"

"No. Not yet. It would take time. He's been. You made me thrust him into a body that he has no idea how to control. Walking alone will take...months of rehabilitation and--"

Her voice is raising in pitch. Her fingers have taken up the twitching again. The verge of hysterics.

Jack had never planned on her being broken by this job. Angry and betrayed, yes. But not this hurt.

"Get him started on it then. He doesn't have months. I need him functional. Fully functional. You've done so great so far, Angela. It's just this last little bit."

Just this last bit and she can be done. And she can wash her hands of it.

"Enlist McCree's help, if he insists on hanging around despite my direct orders; you may as well put him to use."

"Sir..." she says. She quivers. Sleep deprived, stressed, overworked. "Yes sir," she says, her shoulders curling. Defeated.

Genji

The cowboy's face flakes away daily. The layers shed as he sits at Genji's bedside. The facades. The lies. Until only the raw, pulpy truth of it is left.

And then the cowboy leaves.

And when returns he is normal again.

Until the process repeats.

Endless.

Genji is learning, slowly, to move the limbs he can no longer truly feel.

"It'll take a while," the angel says. Her wings blink with a thousand eyes. All of them are blue. "The nerve reconnections will take some time to grow accustomed to the synthetic weaves. It will itch, I fear, once the medication has worn off."

Genji already itches. The entirety of his body is a scab. Crusted over.

Her hands touch him all over and soul of him throbs from the kiss of her fingers.

It is better when she is not there.

The cowboy is easier to understand. A man plagued by a lot of regrets. He reminds Genji of Hanzo.

The thought only stings a little bit.

Hanzo will get what is coming to him.

When they have deemed fit, Hanzo will get his

McCree--he had said his name near the end of one of their meetings and his expression had been an open, bleeding thing, a homeless pet, a trampled flower--does not stir the same rage in Genji as Hanzo does regardless.

McCree is trying to help.

He comes to comfort.

Genji, strung out as he is, still recognizes this.

Genji does not talk much during McCree's visits. McCree does not ask him to. The cowboy seems perfectly happy to talk and talk and fill the awful silences.

He was in a gang, not all that long ago. He shows off the tattoo on his left arm with a small grin of equal parts shame and pride. A layer under a layer. He speaks poorly of the people in the gang with him; but he is not fully ashamed of his past.

"Did you kill?" Genji asks.

"Kill who?"

"People."

McCree looks away. A strip of skin coils down from his cheek to melt into thin air. "Yeah," McCree says. "I...it wasn't exactly my proudest times."

"Do you kill people now?"

"I think you know that we do. Did you kill people?"

For a moment Genji does not want to answer. But the cowboy has shown so much of himself. An equal offering, what could it hurt?

"I didn't. Not really," Genji says. His voice is still foreign to his own ears. Deeper than it had been before. Dusty and bedraggled. "Not the way my family wanted me to."

McCree touches one of the tubes that coils up from Genji's arm, twisting under his skin like a foreign, evil worm.

The closest to physical comfort the cowboy has managed to achieve. Genji can see, with the casual way the McCree interacts with the angel--a touch here and there to her spectral, awesome being--how physical the man usually is.

He wonders if it aches the same way, looking down on Genji's ruined, inhuman form.

A nurse, doe-eyed and squirming had brought him a mirror when he asked.

He had barely recognized himself in the reflection.

The dark roots in the crop of green hair had done it.

It was him. Monstrously so, but him.

What is left of him is brittle. Fragile feeling. The fingers of his left hand are numb to anything but the bite of the pain medication, the first searing kiss of it before it fades to smooth nothingness.

The angel and her nurses, the extensions she has spread to keep an eye on him, look down with pity.

At least the cowboy doesn't do that.

At least he doesn't.

Jesse

Jesse lays in his bunk at night and he stares up at the ceiling.

His skin feels too tight. Crawls and shivers with the thought of Genji, lying in the medical wing. The places on his stomach that have been grafted with synthetic replacement. Grey and unfeeling.

Angela's handiwork.

A miracle all the nurses say.

But Jesse doesn't see a miracle.

And secretly, he doesn't think Angela does either.

Genji speaks in half-delirious riddles. High as fuck, like as not. His jaw is sharp and mechanical like a shark's. It clicks too loudly when he speaks. A constant, horrifying reminder.

The anger is somewhat lost under the weight of the painkillers. Jesse hasn't been able to find the edge of it, to coax it out into being for further inspection.

In truth, it is not his place to.

Genji is to be brought into Blackwatch, dangerous or not. And nothing Jesse says, or does, or finds is going to change that.

But still he tries.

He sits up in his bunk. He finds his clothes and pulls them on.

Nearly three weeks Genji has been here. Nearly three weeks of constant surgeries and tests.

The nurses are run ragged.

The one on duty when Jesse reaches the medical wing is fast asleep. McCree moves past her as a shadow. Slips into Genji's room with barely a sound.

"What are you doing?"

Genji's voice startles him. Jesse's muscles tighten, he whirls around to face Genji on the bed.

Genji's eyes glow red in the darkness.

"Sorry," Jesse says, swallowing down the copper taste of his momentary panic, "I was...that is I thought you'd be asleep."

"Sneaking up on me?" Genji asks. His voice is so mechanical. Inflectionless. Something lost in the weeks he's been here, just one more step from human.

"Just...checkin' on ya." Jesse steps further into the room. "Couldn't sleep."

Genji grins. The sight of his lips pulling up, the skin shifting slightly under the metal bracings of his rebuilt jaw, is horrible. Angela did not make him capable of smiling. The thought stews low in Jesse's stomach.

"You were worried."

"Yeah...I guess. If you're tryin' ta sleep I can..."

"Sleep," Genji says. "Would you like to know something?"

"Shoot, darlin'."

The nickname slung so casually from McCree's lips seems to surprise Genji. His eyebrows raise. The red of his pupil dilates, retracts. The flow of liquid within the tubes speeds up.

Genji looks down. He looks away. Signs of discomfort, though Jesse doesn't really know how to explain it. Or what to do about it.

"I do not think I need to sleep any longer," Genji says. He sighs; his shoulders settle low in the bed. "I am not tired. And I have not been for many days."

Angela has remained in strict confidence about Genji's different...enhancements. The eyes are one, clearly, the legs, the spinal and jaw bracings. His right arm. Jesse does not know what else she has done, what else she has 'fixed' under Morrison's orders.

Genji's ghastly smile haunts him.

Jesse pats the edge of the bed, frowning. "That sucks," he says. An understatement. "I'm...truly...really sorry about that."

Genji half-shrugs. His eyes flutter shut. His right hand moves in the sheets. The mechanical bits flex and knead in the material.

He's getting better with the cyborg parts. Every day sees a little more finesse. Angela has already hinted that Genji's time bound to a bed is coming to an end. Morrison, demanding results. And Reyes expecting them too.

"Would you help me," Genji says. The words seem to come from deep in his chest. Wrenched from some place Jesse can only just fathom.

This is not a man used to asking for help. This is not a man used to needing it.

Jesse can feel the familiar weight of Peacekeeper on his hip, though, in reality, he knows that is not what Genji means. The thought is still there, weighing on him.

The rabid dog to be put down. Soft and gentle-like. In his sleep.

"Sure," Jesse says. "Whatcha need?"

"I would like to get up," Genji says. He glares down at the foot of the bed. At the skinny ball joints of his new knees. The thin carbon fiber and titanium length of his shins. "But I...have yet to figure out how to..."

It is not a good idea. Jesse's medical expertise is novel at best, one single step above 'if it's bleeding slap a bandaid on it'.

Jesse's hesitation must show on his face because Genji scowls. His hips twitch. Up and down. Jesse cannot help but watch the motion. Abstract and inappropriate.

She has soldered grey material across the whole of his torso. Cut away the bits too hard to save, too useless. His body moves in a wave, flat and smooth. There is ocean metaphor in there, somewhere, but Jesse can't focus on it. The truth bare before him is too terrible.

"I'll help you," he says, if only to make Genji stop. "All right. Okay. I'll help. What do you need?"

"Your hands."

Jesse holds them out. Genji's flesh is warm, too hot, buzzing with a pulse stronger than any normal human's. A side effect of his body working triple time to keep going. To keep him alive.

The chest piece, the complicated mass that regulates things like heartbeat and blood flow, glows brighter when Genji begins to pull. An effort. A visible effort.

Jesse braces himself, lets Genji use him as an anchor as he swings his new legs across the bed. As he brings them down to the floor.

The clack lightly against the linoleum.

Genji sighs. Both his hands tighten just slightly in Jesse's grip. His head leans forward, resting for a just a moment, against Jesse's stomach.

A strange and awkward intimacy.

Jesse looks down at the top of Genji's head. The green is growing out of his hair. There is something void-like in the image. Another thought of the ocean, the all consuming depths of it.

"Are you tired?"

Genji shakes his head. The material of Jesse's shirt moves against his stomach. "They feel...this is not my body."

Jesse doesn't know what to say to that. "It's just the drugs talkin', sugar, you'll get used to it."

Genji's fingers twitch again in his hands. Nearly painful, the unconscious squeezing.

"You are lying."

"I'm just tryin' to make it better."

"When I was...that is," Genji's voice drops. He mutters something in a quick, cutting language that Jesse figures is Japanese. When he tilts his head back, his expression is set. Determination in the quirk of his eyebrows, in the smolder of those red, reflective eyes. "Help pull me up," he says. "I want to stand. Once at least."

Jesse braces himself again. His biceps flex. Genji is heavier than he looks like he should be. He sways into Jesse's form once he is properly upright.

Those skinny knees buckle. His feet slip.

Jesse holds him up through it. His right hand has migrated to Genji's thigh.

For extra support, he tells himself.

His fingers curl against the cool grey flesh. Like a beetle's shell over the remaining muscles and bones. He wants to press harder, to feel the cut and curl of Genji's hip bones beneath his hand. He is afraid to press harder.

Instinct and instinct.

Genji grunts. His eyebrows furrow, a deep crease appearing between them. Some of his weight shifts back and then he is holding himself up. Standing.

Standing.

Genji smiles again, that terrible, horrific stretch of his mouth.

And what can Jesse do but smile back?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Image link:
> 
> http://whynotmyart.tumblr.com/post/160149667451/heres-an-illustration-for-chapter-two-of-ghoul-a


	3. Chapter 3

Mercy

"What are you asking me?" Angela cannot control her tone. It dips and weaves beyond her control.

On the screen in front of her, a series of numbers run in a loop. Genji's respiration and heart rate per minute. Charts of his energy outputs, his caloric drip intake, the electrical stress on his nerves. He's made more progress in a month than she would have thought possible. 

He's inhuman.

And it's all her doing.

He has already outrun every therapy program she has set down for him. He has already exceeded them all.

"You all right there, Doc?" McCree asks. He leans on her desk, glances over his shoulder at her. His butt has pushed some of her paperwork askew, she pulls them out from under him with a click of her tongue.

The readouts don't mean anything to him. She sometimes wonders if Genji even really means anything to him. McCree is flippant and casual at the best of times. Down right rude and crass at others.

But that is unfair.

Of everyone in Overwatch, McCree has shown the most interest in Genji's rehabilitation. She should be thankful for that. Thankful that someone besides herself and Commander Morrison seem to care.

She tips her head back, her neck gives a satisfying pop as she works the kinks out.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I'm just...a little out of it."

"'S not a problem. All that coffee you're drinkin' might be but..." McCree gestures to the wastebasket next to her desk, overflowing with empty cups from the commissary. Her pink lipstick stain on each rim. The brown rings of black coffee at the bottom of each cup.

"I hardly feel it," she says. She leans her chin in her palm. Hits a button to slow the flit of information across the screen. "You were saying something about..."

She shakes her head, trails off.

"I was askin' how he's doin'. You know this," he taps some of the papers she hasn't moved too far away yet, "means shit all to me."

"I am not supposed to talk about my patients with--"

"Doctor Zig. I think you an I both know that Genji's case ain't one you can pull a whole lot of patient confidentiality on. You saved the man's life, sure, ain't no one tryin' to take that from you but..." McCree rolls his shoulders.

The light from her computer catches his eyes.

And for a moment, Angela can see the real Jesse McCree. The determined, dangerous, frankly ruthless killer. The driven man recruited by Blackwatch. Gabriel Reyes' shining star.

She looks down at her hands.

"I think you know as well as I that physically he is improving faster than any normal human could. It has been two months since I performed that first emergency surgery and yet...he moves with speed and grace and dexterity that I would not have expected for him to have mastered in years. At least years."

"Reyes' been askin' questions. Askin' me questions. And I'm not really one for the tone our conversations have been taking. You think Genji's field ready?" McCree asks.

Angela twists her fingers in on themselves. Her nails bite into the flesh of her opposite knuckles. "I could ask you the same thing. You spend more time with him than I do."

"Not my opinion they want, unfortunately."

"Is this a threat?" she asks. "Because I've been reporting how improved he is. He has improved, McCree. It's a miracle. It's my miracle and he..." She bites her lip. The corners of her eyes pinch inward, she can feel the threat of tears in her sinuses.

Overworked.

Over stressed.

Overwatch.

The golden opportunity.

McCree is watching her. His expression is blank. Maybe that's what makes her say the next part. The terrible truth she has denied for so long.

"I just...want to be done with it," she says, quietly. McCree's eyebrows raise. "Physically, he is ready. And I just want to be finished."

"That's pretty fucked up for a doctor to say."

Angela closes her eyes.

It is fucked up. He is absolutely right. She can't argue with him.

She doesn't even try.

Gabriel

Vickers is screaming.

Gabriel looks up from the intelligence report he had been looking over. The smell hits him before the sight does. Piss, the heady, stinging scent of urine.

And Vickers' screams.

McCree's voice too, nearly drowned in the racket, yelling something.

Yelling Shimada's name, over and over.

"Genji," he is saying, "Genji, Genji."

Fucking Christ.

Vickers is lying on the ground of the training room. Curled in the fetal position. His arm cradled against his chest.

The fingers are pointed the wrong way, there is a knot of swelling above where Vickers is clutching, just below the roll of his sleeve. The arm sort of hangs, useless. Rag-dolled. Obviously broken, probably in more than one place.

"Genji," McCree is saying. "It's okay, hey, hey, Genji, it's all right."

Gabriel pushes between the few Blackwatch recruits who have gathered to watch. They part for him like water.

"What the fuck is going on here," Gabriel asks.

Vickers' wailing dies down to a sniffle. A gurgling, throaty complaint. The front of his pants are soaked.

Shimada stands above him.

The clear victor in the sparring match Gabriel had assigned them.

McCree has a hand on Shimada's shoulder. His grip is white-knuckled.

"He broke my fuckin' arm," Vickers spits. His face is scarlet, his legs move like a bug's, twitching. "He's fucking crazy!"

Shimada flinches. He steps back. He looks at Gabriel.

"You break his arm?"

"No shit he did, Commander, it didn't come like--"

"Shut up, Vickers. Shimada, you break his arm?"

Shimada shrugs. His eyes glow. Gabriel doesn't like looking at them; the way they glint, even when there is no light to reflect. The red enhancements deep in the pupils

"It was a friendly spar. I don't know about where you come from, but here we don't fuck up our allies if we can help it."

A lie.

The background part.

Gabriel has memorized Genji Shimada's file. Has studied it and Angela's reports on his progress obsessively over the past few months.

"Was it an accident?" Gabriel asks.

Shimada's eyes drift to McCree. There is something helpless in his expression. Another reminder that Gabriel was supposed to have nipped that little burgeoning relationship in the bud.

"I," Shimada begins. He takes a breath. Doctor Ziegler has outfitted him with a metal mask-like faceplate. It covers the horror show of his mouth. But it gives him an even more mechanical tone. "That is...Yes," Shimada says. "I did not mean to."

Gabriel looks between the two of them. The three of them, McCree, God damn him, is a part of this too. His gaze meets McCree's; he remembers their conversation.

"Reischer," Gabriel says, and a woman from the small group of onlookers steps forward. "Escort Mister Vickers to the medical wing please."

She bends down, slips an arm around Vickers' waist. Gabriel can see the way her face twists at the smell. But she gets him standing and the two of them exit. Vickers, for his part, never stops glaring at Shimada.

Another problem.

But hopefully Gabriel will be more efficient putting this one down.

"The rest of you are dismissed for the day," Gabriel says, turning to the other recruits, all of whom have begun to wander back to training anyway. The show is over. The show left with Vickers.

They glance around at one another, and sort of slowly, as a mass begin to head for the locker rooms.

Shimada does not move.

McCree stands at his side.

The back of their hands brush. Just the smallest, most innocuous little touch. But Gabriel sees it.

"All right," Gabriel says. "Okay," he says. "So this is gonna be a thing? Am I going to have to worry about scrubbing recruits every other week to satisfy some...violent little outburst that you have?"

"Commander, sir, that just ain't fair, Genji didn't--"

"Was I speaking to you, McCree? I must have missed that part." Gabriel narrows his eyes. He looks back to Shimada. "So. I'll ask again. Was it an accident?"

Shimada looks down. "Mostly," he says. "It will not happen again."

Gabriel closes his eyes. The whole thing hurts his head. Mostly the fact that McCree has been so on the money about everything.

Shimada is a rabid dog. His sparring is downright brutal. Shimada is a dangerous tool. He cannot be employed without the utmost care. Shimada is not ready for real combat. Doctor Ziegler clearly has been ignoring his psych profile in her reports.

But there's nothing any of them can do about that now.

There is no going back.

There isn't a do-over.

"Both of you just get out of my sight," Gabriel says. "And don't let something like this ever happen again."

Jesse

Genji does not come to dinner.

Jesse is really only a little surprised.

Genji has done very little to endear himself to the group. The other recruits keep their distance from him, orbit around him with a wary side eye. Dinner is just another painful example of how out of place Genji is.

And Jesse too now, stained by his associations.

He sits alone as he eats.

The others watch him from across the room.

Jesse doesn't blame them, not really. Genji is a time bomb and none of them are looking to get caught in the next blast. Vickers had been unlucky enough this time. They are now even more on edge than before.

"They are scared of me," Genji says, when Jesse finds him later sitting out in the training field, staring up at the sky.

Jesse takes a slow drag off his cigarette. He doesn't answer. He's not going to lie. There's no point to it.

"They think I am a monster."

Jesse tips his head. Genji's eyes are like the cherry at the end of his cigarette; winking in the almost dark. The moment of quiet before the halogen lights flash into being; before they throw everything into harsh relief and stark truths.

"More like a demon," McCree says with a grin. "You fight like something dragged outta hell."

Genji looks at him. His eyebrows raise. The metal half-mask blocks any hope Jesse has of reading Genji's expressions.

Jesse shakes his head. "I was kidding," he says. His cigarette is dead, only the bitter, ashy end of it is left. He snuffs it out in the little pocket ashtray he carries. Pulls another from the pack.

Genji leans back against the wall. Silent. He is sitting crisscross. Jesse stands beside him, his shin just touching the round ball joint of Genji's knee.

Silent.

Silent.

The automated light system kicks on. The floodlights around the perimeter of the training ground fill the space with white, buzzing light.

Genji's hand raises between the two of them. His index and middle finger make a scissoring motion.

Angela would kill him.

But Angela isn't here.

Jesse places the cigarette between Genji's fingers. He watches as Genji undoes the mask covering the lower half of his face. Unclipping the latches one handed.

Ash flakes off the end of the cigarette.

"It feels like a long time," Genji says, "since the last time I had a smoke." He puts the cigarette to his lips and draws in a quick little breath. The end flares. After a moment, the smoke curls out of Genji's mouth in the exhale. "I liked my brand better."

Jesse smiles. "You can't knock an American classic." He reaches down to take the cigarette back, but Genji moves his hands away.

"It is nice," Genji says. "To remember some things. Doctor Ziegler would be mad if she knew you gave me this."

"Yeah," Jesse says, "well, I watched her pull out one of your lungs so...Maybe she doesn't get to be the authority on what's healthiest for your respiratory system."

Genji touches his chest with his free hand. The expanse of skin right below his throat. His dusky nipple is peaked in the air. Jesse doesn't really mean to notice, but now that he has he can't stop looking.

"I have not grown accustomed to it yet," Genji says. "I hate this body. I hate my..."

"Your brother?"

Genji's eyes close. The smoke drifts between the two of them. Turns white and wraithlike in the light.

"I keep thinking of him," Genji says, quietly. "When I fight, when I don't fight. When I broke his arm."

"Vickers'll be fine. He's ex-Navy Seal. Lil ol' broken arm won't stop him."

"That is not the point. I was thinking of Hanzo and I would have killed him."

Jesse nods. "Yeah," he says. "I know, darlin', I got that part."

Genji's face twists. His upper lip pulls back from his teeth. "Darling," he says. "I wish you wouldn't call me that."

Jesse shoves his hands in his pockets, tips himself forward just enough to meet Genji's gaze. "All right, then," he says, "so I won't."

Genji stares at him a beat. Another. His eyebrows move in tiny little flexes. Eventually he looks away, uncomfortable.

"Why aren't you scared of me?"

Jesse considers. He taps the toe of his boot against the ground. Leaves an imprint in the loose dust.

"I am scared of you," Jesse says. "But it's not cuz the way you look."

Genji makes a sound, a grating rumble from deep in his throat. He is laughing, Jesse realizes with a start. That choking, dry scrape is what has been left to him.

"You are sentimental," Genji says, he tilts his head back. The bracing over where his Adam's apple would be catches he light, dull grey metal going silver.

"Just the way I am."

"Are you scared I will kill you?"

"Not me. Revenge got a funny way of not tastin' so great once you've gotten the bite."

Jesse can see the way Genji turns the words over in his head. The narrowed eyes, the locked jaw. Considering. And then he stands. The motion is seamless now. Genji's body moves with beautiful precision.

"I think," Genji says, "on that we shall remain divided. I am going to kill him. I am going to kill them all. It is simply a question of when."

"And people like Vickers?" Jesse's hands itch to touch Genji's elbow, his wrist, the sullen, swollen human parts of him. "It's all well and good to want revenge, to hunt it, but you said yourself: you'd have killed him. And that...that's what I'm scared of."

Naked honesty. Jesse hates the vulnerable way it makes him feel. Something about Genji getting under his skin, again and again.

Genji moves, almost quicker than the eye can follow. He rounds on Jesse; boxes him against the wall. The height difference is significant, Jesse is tall even compared to people like Commanded Reyes; Genji's mechanical parts have stunted him. His head comes only to Jesse's collar.

"Why are you like this?" Genji asks. His tone the same as earlier. An accusation, a sulk, all rolled up in one. His metal hand curls against the brick of the building. The concrete gives a dry complaint. His human hand is fisted at his side.

"If you think I will hurt you, then just leave me alone. I will slaughter my brother and I will be out of your lives. I need only the help to get to him."

"That just ain't how it works," Jesse says. And this time he does reach forward, he touches the rubbery synthetic skin on Genji's left side, a hand's length away from the core tangle of wires.

More exposed vulnerabilities.

They both have them. The game has always been fair.

"It ain't all black and white like that. Genji you...that is. I...over the past--"

And, God, this is not the way he wanted to do this. This is not how he envisioned it. Jesse McCree confessing to a crush on a man so damaged that it sort of circles around to being sick.

Genji's eyes go wide again. The skin of his forearm goes tight, tendons in his wrist standing out amongst the wires. Sharp like steel.

"I care about you, too. It's not just...the others that I'm--I mean. Maybe it started out that way but. I'm scared of you, sure, but mostly I'm scared for you, you dumb sonofabitch. You're gonna get yourself hurt."

"You think anything can hurt me anymore?"

"I think that you're still alive. I think that could change if you ain't careful."

"Alive," Genji says, tipping his head. "Alive," he says again. Musing.

His human hand reaches out touches Jesse's throat. His skin is rough, warmer than it should be. Thick callouses, tough scars. There is nothing soft left to him.

So soft is the only thing Jesse can give him.

He leans forward, unconsciously, into the touch. It has always, always been coming to this.

Genji

The cowboy smells like smoke. Genji closes his eyes, he chases the scent. The hollow, heavy bite of it.

He drops his fingers to follow under Jesse's hoodie, feels the way Jesse's abs shudder and flinch under his touch.

"Is this what you want from me?" Genji asks. His nose presses into the hollow below Jesse's chin, his voice against Jesse's bird-like pulse.

He can feel Jesse's inhale, oxygen tripping over his tongue. The swell of it in his throat, forming words.

Genji's regime of drugs has slowed, but McCree's face remains a bloody canvas. A daily act of revelations.

"Oh Christ," McCree drawls when Genji's hand slides against the front of his sweatpants. "Oh fuck, dar--sweetheart. You shouldn't--"

When Genji was human, fully a human, he would not have hesitated. He was handsome and sure and desirable and good at it.

So so fucking good at it.

And he was human.

And now he is not and it has taken something from him. His fingers curl slowly over the resistance of McCree's still soft cock, the easily distinguished lump of it within the lightweight fabric of the pants.

He hesitates.

"Sweetheart," Jesse says again.

It's worse than darling, somehow. Hits a place more tender, more raw. Genji steps back.

His body is monstrous and Jesse McCree has just been indulging him all along. That is what he fears to see written across Jesse's face.

But when he looks back up, when McCree lifts a hand to stroke it down the scarred length of his forearm, he sees nothing of the sort.

"It's not exactly a good idea, you know," Jesse says. "You an me could get in a lotta trouble. Fraternizin'."

Genji doesn't know the word exactly, but the implication is clear enough.

"Are you afraid to get in trouble?"

"Not in the least, sweetheart. But you should know: Commander Reyes already don't approve of us."

Genji looks down. The pieces of him that are not his ache, the phantom itches of his arm and his legs. His cock.

"Genji," McCree says. His voice is soft. His voice is gentle. "Still with me, sugar?"

"Yes," Genji says. Because McCree believes he is alive.

"Wanna take this inside?"

Genji doesn't want to talk about it and the spontaneous whirlwind of it has passed.

When he was human he would not have hesitated.

But he is not human.

He's not even really sure he is alive.

"Okay," he says. And he lets McCree lead him into the building, down the halls and to McCree's room. The space is small, cramped, and there are clothes in a pile by the closet.

"Sorry about the mess," McCree says.

Genji shrugs. It doesn't matter. McCree's hand, wrapped around his own, is the only thing that matters. McCree crosses the room; Genji, still holding his hand, follows.

The cot is ridiculous. They will not both fit. But Jesse sits on the edge and tugs Genji against him and Genji sort of figures maybe that doesn't matter either. Space; a lack of space; it makes no difference.

"You're awful quiet."

"Am I?" Genji blinks. McCree's chin is balanced on his hip, but Genji cannot feel it. He swallows, brushes his human, flesh fingers through McCree's hair.

It's not as soft as it looks like it should be. A little wiry. Not silken and smooth either.

Genji's fingers curl.

"You okay?"

"I don't know."

"We don't gotta do this, you know. You can just stay here. We can just talk."

There is nothing to talk about.

Genji used to be good at this.

And he hates--he fucking hates--that now he is not.

He touches McCree's lip, presses his thumbnail against the plump give of it.

When he was human, he would have had McCree put those lips to good use on his cock. But the thought is so distant now, the memory of it stirs only anger at the base of his spine.

His spine.

Not even his. Augmented and rebuilt and barely his at all anymore.

"Tell me what to do, sweetheart."

Genji doesn't know the answer to that. Genji used to know the answer to that. His fingers clench tighter, McCree hisses, his hips hitch.

Genji trails his fingers down McCree's chin. He scratches the little goatee McCree has grown. There is phantom blood on his fingers, but the visions are fading. An encouraging sign, if anything about this can be called encouraging.

"You can use me, sugar," McCree says. His eyes are huge and round and watery. Amber from the red lights on Genji's torso. "I don't mind."

Genji's mechanical hand lifts McCree's to his hip. Pulls it up further to the mess of wires and tangle of tubes that is his new and functioning heart. Pulls it up further to the cool metal studded in his jaw.

He was not made to do this.

The angel has taken it all from him. Everything human as been removed, surgically and coolly taken from him.

He collapses against McCree.

The bed creaks. The complaint goes unnoticed.

Genji tucks himself on his side across McCree's lap. He draws his knees up. He clutches at McCree's shoulders.

McCree says nothing.

His lips press briefly against Genji's forehead, his hairline.

They stay like that for a very, very long time.


	4. Chapter 4

Genji

"You're doing so well," Jesse is saying. His voice is heavy, accent thickening.

The praise is nice.

Once Genji would not have needed it, but now it settles in the hollow of his throat. A warm ounce of pressure next his pulse.

His fingers shift, wrap tighter around McCree's cock. Giving him something more to fuck into.

"Nng, sweet--Genji," Jesse bites out. Sweat on his hips; it drips from his forehead into his hair. Drenched. Soaked.

They have discussed the nicknames, dropping them has a been a clear and conscious effort on McCree's part. Genji does not punish him for the slip, this time, he lets it slide.

But it is nicer to hear his name.

Reminds him of where they both stand here. Reminds him of places in himself he had written off as dead.

"Genji," McCree says again. Closer to a wail. His knees, on either side of Genji's shoulders squeeze inward.

Genji breathes heavily onto McCree's upper thigh. The thick matting of hair there. Coarse and smelly.

Arousal that Genji doesn't know how to process or what to do with. That he really only vaguely recognizes. An ache that he remembers more than feels. His stomach in knots. A coil with no recourse, no loosening. Just building and building and building.

His lips brush McCree's cock.

It is thick and sturdy. A little more red than Genji would have liked when he was fully alive, but he cannot be as picky now. And the girth of it almost makes up for the ruddiness. The thick circumcised head.

Genji presses his tongue against it and Jesse grunts. The noise is ripped from him. A protest perhaps? Genji cannot tell.

His hands too, suddenly moving to Genji's head. Fingers in his hair.

When Genji was human he would have kept going regardless. But now, unsure, terrified deep in him of the rejection, he stops.

"Oh shit," McCree says. He is panting. His hips flex. "Oh fuckin'." His chest, as furred as his thighs, a tangled expanse of wiry hair, rises and falls dramatically.

The valley between his pecs is moist with sweat.

His fingers loosen. Petting more gently.

"Wasn't expectin' that," Jesse admits. His eyes crack open and he meets Genji's gaze. His lashes are clumped together. There is a dash of spittle on his chin, drool. Worked up enough to be drooling.

Genji doesn't know whether to be disgusted or flattered. Cannot help the fluttering of both within his synthetic, rebuilt ribs.

A drop of precome pools at McCree's cockhead. Genji wipes it with his thumb before it can drip into the rest of the mess on his shaft.

"Do you want me to..."

Stop.

To leave.

Genji debates between both.

"Keep going," is a far cry from the answer he expects. But Jesse sounds sincere and he's meeting Genji's gaze and he isn't looking away. "You don't have to, if you're uncomfortable but...Startled me but it..."

Genji needs to hear it. His mechanical fingers press into McCree's thigh hard enough to bruise. Tight enough that McCree shifts and hisses.

"It felt good, Genji," McCree says when Genji has let him go. Four dark round circles are already forming up just above his knee.

The closest thing to a hickey Genji has left of him.

"It felt really good."

"I used to do it a lot," Genji says. He moves his flesh hand idly, not letting McCree's erection flag in his grip.

Jesse touches his chin, thumbs his lip. Where the metal is, Genji cannot feel the contact. But on his lip proper, he can, and it takes everything in him not to press into the touch.

"You've told me," Jesse says. "Trynna make me jealous?"

The idea is absurd, of course. But Genji allows himself to grin. His tongue slips out; grazes McCree's thumb.

"You wanna stop?" McCree asks. "Talk about it?"

Genji shakes his head. He twists his hand, drops it so his pointer and middle finger bracket the base of McCree's cock. Thumb against his balls, stroking lightly between them.

Jesse's head flops back, his breath leaves him in a wheeze.

"You're gonna be the death of me," Jesse says.

Genji can only hope he is wrong.

Jesse

"It is unnecessary."

"But I just...I feel like a heel, sugar, not even tryin' ta return the favor."

Genji is laying atop him.

After.

The evidence of his earlier release drying between them. It'll be gross soon, is already sort of gross. But it isn't the problem at hand.

"Come on, Genji," Jesse says, his lips moving against Genji's temple. His hands on Genji's hips. "We can stop as soon as you say so. I just--I wanna touch you too."

"There is nothing to--" Genji cuts himself off. Bites his own lip. His eyes flash. Jesse doesn't let the show bother him.

He has gotten used to it since they have started this; Genji's impotent displays of annoyance. Warning signs to get people to leave him alone.

And they usually work. On the team. On Angela.

But McCree isn't just anyone.

And Genji barely scares him anymore.

He is becoming more disciplined in the field, though whether that is Reyes' doing or his own, Jesse couldn't say. Either way the edge is being honed. Genji developing as Morrison must have hoped.

A useful weapon.

And so much more.

Jesse spreads his fingers flat. Brushing them against the mound where Genji's cock would have been. The synthetic covering shifts beneath his touch. Anchored where it attaches to the hip Angela built but looser here in the center.

There is flesh beneath it, McCree is sure. Though he has never had the courage before to ask.

Genji is blushing.

The sight is rare, if not exactly beautiful. Something novel in the color so high on his cheeks. Something almost cute about it.

Genji sits up, his fingers curl on Jesse's chest. Most of the metal bracings have been shed on the floor next to McCree's bed. An exacting process but Jesse is thankful Genji allows it. The catching, prodding bits of metal left are the required ones. The metal skeleton that Angela has built into him.

Genji watches, silent, as Jesse slides his fingers along the curve of his hip joint. The silver metal is cool despite how close they have been laying. Jesse touches where the silicone is grafted to Genji's flesh.

He watches the way the light, teasing touches make Genji flinch.

"That hurt?"

"No," Genji says. "You can't hurt me."

They both already know that this is a lie.

McCree returns to tracing Genji's metal. The places where he has no feeling. The tangle of wires at the center of him. Tubes and cords and terrible vulnerability.

Genji shudders again.

And Jesse thinks once more of that first real conversation. Standing in Genji's room with Peacekeeper, planning on putting him down and instead fumbling into something so much worse.

"Do you want me to stop?" Jesse asks. His fingers snake between the wires, tugging lightly. With each pull, Genji's hips twitch. A shock against Jesse's fingertips.

"No," Genji says. "Just don't..."

Jesse gets it. Without the covering Jesse is literally holding Genji's heart in his hands. He snakes a finger around the red, glowing core and Genji hisses.

"Sorry."

"Do not be."

Honestly, Jesse is surprised that Genji is even allowing the contact. It's been a little under a year, enough time that McCree would consider them friends. Would consider them fuck buddies.

But this is something else entirely.

"What's it feel like?" Jesse asks. His free hand is still rubbing Genji's hip, tugging at the synthetic cover until it loosens.

Genji shrugs, pushes his chest forward. A bolder motion than McCree has become accustomed to. His hand slips, knuckle deep in the wires now. His fingers twitching against what can only be called the core.

Genji's core.

The heart of him.

"It is...thrilling," Genji says. "I remember what this..." His knees tighten, the dull ache of bruising on Jesse's hips. It's not the first time he has left their bed carrying battle wounds and it will, hopefully, not be the last.

"When I was human," Genji says. Panting a little between each word. Worked up more than Jesse has ever seen him before.

"You are human."

Genji bites his lip. He grabs Jesse's hand where it is tangled in the complicated wires in his chest. Flesh to flesh. Genji's palm is sweaty.

"When my body was human," he amends, begrudgingly. It is a fight they have had and will continue to have. Genji's core trills against Jesse's fingertips, vibrations he can feel in his bones. Echoing.

"So it's good then?"

"Need the ego boost, cowboy?" Genji says. He grins. The motion hardly bothers Jesse anymore.

He grins back. "I just like hearin' you say it. Always so tight lipped."

Genji rocks his hips, he smoothes his hand down McCree's arm. "You are doing good," Genji says. His mechanical hand joins Jesse's between his thighs. He moves the covering material away with little fanfare.

Practiced at it.

He has become so proficient with his body. Almost like it is his own.

Jesse surges up, clutching Genji to him. His lips brush Genji's chin, his jaw, the straining tendons of his throat.

They do not kiss.

Nine months and they have never really, truly kissed.

But Genji turns his face away when Jesse tilts his head. His mechanical hand tugs Jesse's into the space so recently covered by silicone.

The angle on Jesse's wrist is extreme and he can't really see what his is doing. His fingers still around Genji's core. He brings that hand down to brace it on Genji's lower back instead.

Jesse was right, of course, about there being skin across Genji's lower body. It's rough, like the rest of him; scarred and tough. Thick and raised like callouses. Jesse strokes his fingers against it, watching Genji's face for any twitching sign of discomfort.

For his part, Genji seems just as lost as Jesse.

He bites his lip. His eyes creased at the corners. Concentration in the stiff lines of him.

"Can you feel it?"

Genji takes a shuddering breath. He nods. He bends to touch his forehead to Jesse's, his breath on Jesse's lips. Sharing air. Gasping for it together.

Jesse is hard again.

The thought is almost foreign, a sudden clenching in his stomach. Too absorbed in exploring Genji. The weight of it is unimportant.

"I did not think it...would feel like this," Genji admits. He whines when Jesse tenses his hand to scrape a fingernail over the space instead. His voice cracks. "Jesse," he says, "oh fuck, Jess--"

McCree does not know what orgasm will look like in Genji. But, God, how he wants to.

He moves his fingers with more purpose. Flattening his hand to cup Genji's mound further. There no holes, no means of entry or release, not this far forward at least. Just scars and memories and shuddering pleasure.

"Have you done this by yourself?" Jesse asks, truly curious.

Genji makes a sound, a rolling sort of admission. "It does not feel how I remember it," Genji says. "But I remember what it--what it used to..."

"But does this feel good?"

Another noise. Higher in his throat. A whirring whine. "Yes, Jesse. It feels good." He is panting, pressing himself closer. Jesse's hand is tight against him.

His wrist twinges, bent nearly backwards but he will not stop. Won't adjust or slow the caressing until--

Until--

Genji's voice catches. The strange enhancements of it trip over a layer of static. Like an overload. A short circuit. The snaking wires that poke from his skin begin to leak steam, moist and hot on Jesse's skin.

Genji's body tenses.

And shudders.

And then collapses, quite heavily, against Jesse's chest.

For a second, a drawing, terrible second, Jesse is convinced he has killed him.

"Holy shit," he says. Moving with Genji's dead weight. Manhandling Genji's prone form until he has Genji's chin cupped between his palms. "Holy Christ, Genji! Genji, you..."

Genji's eyelids flutter. His eyes open. Brown and clear. And the light deep within them blinks to life. Genji's fingers move, push Jesse's hands off his face.

"You okay?"

Silently, Genji seems to take stock. He frowns, then nods. "It would seem so."

Jesse chuckles he can't help it. He presses a kiss against Genji's temple, his cheek, unbothered by the way Genji paws at his chin. Too overjoyed at having not killed him to be worried about the awkwardness.

"That was...something," Genji says.

"Good somethin'?"

Genji makes a face, thinking again. Silent. Jesse is used to this. He is more than used to this. Brooding and Genji still go hand in hand.

But then Genji smiles, just a little bit devilish, and he sits up properly. The lights around his exposed heart flicker like a pulse. "I am not sure," Genji says. "But perhaps another round would give me a better idea."

Another round.

A glimpse into the person Genji used to be. That he can still be.

Jesse has never wanted anything more.

Mercy

The tests are hardly worth running.

Angela takes notes on the clipboard she's holding as Genji scales the small wall that's been constructed in the center of the training field. He flips off the top, lands smoothly. Lightly. The digitized reader on the top of her board barely even spikes.

Effortless.

It's all effortless.

He spins, rolls. Even over the distance she can hear the slight clicking of his joints, the right knee, something in it catching. She makes a note.

Eventually, he works his way back around the field to her.

He stands straight. Not out of breath. Not panting. The lights on his chest, the ones running down the reconstructed part of his spine pulse in a steady rhythm.

"Impressive," she says. "I can't say that I'm surprised."

She cannot read Genji's expression under the mask. His eyebrows flex, but it means nothing to her. He could be grinning, he could be frowning.

"You've done wonderful work," Genji says.

It stings. Angela bites her lip. "Genji, you've worked so hard. I don't...the credit for your recovery is yours."

He isn't looking at her. His left hand moves. The mechanical wrist flexes. She wonders what it feels like. It's the first time she's really wondered.

Four months away and she's all but forgotten what it's like to actually be around him. He's coming up on the year mark, it's approaching faster than she can even believe.

"How do you feel," she asks.

"Same as usual. I suppose. Everything is--"

"Genji, you almost done out here or--"

Angela turns at the intrusion. McCree again, like it could be anyone else. He has a pattern to maintain after all.

He freezes when he sees her. Tips his hat. His hair is getting long, wild, he will need to get it cut soon.

"Oh," he says, grinning. Recovering nicely, if not perfectly smoothly. "Hey, doc. Didn't realize you were back."

"Last minute flight," she says. "Thought I'd stop and check in."

McCree licks his lips. His eyes flick from Genji to Angela and back. The digital monitor on her clipboard begins to beep, quietly, but increasing in tempo.

McCree coughs into his fist. He shuffles his feet. Clearly uncomfortable saying whatever it was he came out here to say.

The monitor, connected to Genji's pulse, continues to raise. Adrenaline. Something else. Angela looks between the two of them.

And it starts to make sense.

"Well I...uhhh. That is." McCree clears his throat again. Shakes his head, dog-like, still grinning. "I'll just go. See you for dinner, da--Genji?"

"That...yes. That is. I will be...finished up here. Shortly." Genji palms the back of his neck. Angela can see the expert way his fingers navigate the wires back there.

"Sounds good then. I'll just...uh. Yeah, see you around, Doctor Zieg. Always a...pleasure."

And with that he has retreated. Pink cheeked. Flustered.

"Are you two--," she begins to say. Stops herself. It's none of her business. It's against protocol. Knowing will do her no good, will simply make her part of the problem.

Genji is staring at her.

His eyes unnerve her. She built them, and they scare her, just a little bit. She shakes her head.

"Never mind," she says. She taps the pen against the clipboard. Genji and McCree. She can only imagine. She knows what she built, what she had to work with, what she cut away. "Now there are a few adjustments I wanted to go over with you. Just small things." She crosses her arms, the clipboard pushes flat against her chest. "Do you have any specific complaints? Areas that you feel need improvement?"

She's thinking of his knee. Of the flex of his wrist.

Genji blushes. The mask hides most of it, but Angela is intimately familiar with the way Genji's body works. That color, peeking out from under the metal, can only be a blush.

"I...that is. I..." he trails off.

Oh.

Damn McCree.

Damn this whole thing.

Angela looks down at the ground. To where Genji's metal feet dig against the packed sand of the training area.

"I'm sorry," she says. The apology sits weird on her tongue. She is sorry. She is not. She saved him.

And she didn't.

"Genji...I..."

She meets Genji's gaze. The steady, glowing red of it. Almost unconsciously, his eyes flit to where McCree had departed. And then back.

"There is...nothing to apologize for, Doctor Ziegler," he says. "I am...becoming used to it."

"Are you?"

His eyes close. His breath hisses out through the mask. The monitor beeps again, a change in his brainwaves, vasopressin. Dopamine. It doesn't matter, Angela presses a button next to the readout, flicks it to the Off position. The beeping dies.

"I am," Genji says. He tips his head. "I am learning to live with it."

**Author's Note:**

> If you are on mobile and unable to view the picture properly, here you go: http://whynotmyart.tumblr.com/post/159563234231/the-first-thing-she-knows-is-that-he-is-dying  
> Ahh so here we are! This is a collab with the lovely amazing talented Whynotmyart on tumblr (verycoolperson here on Ao3). Apparently my life spirals out of control when someone mentions doctors and medical horror because well...here we are. I want to add a more pairing intense chapter in the near future so, check back for smut soon to come lol


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